Local beneficiation of cotton at source gives emerging farmers an opportunity to prosper and facilitates the flow of goods through the value chain into stores.

Listen to this article 8 min Listen to this article 8 min Until quite recently, cotton farming in South Africa was on its knees. Production was a fraction of that sent to the country's gins and mills in the late 1980s. Now, budding new cotton farmers once again see a future in the crop, as retailers return to local sourcing to meet their own sustainability targets.

In northern KwaZulu-Natal, a partnership between a leading retailer and small-scale farmers is seeing home-grown cotton being spun into fibres that are used in locally manufactured bath towels.

The project, initiated by Mr Price, sources, gins and spins cotton grown by small-scale farmers in Makhathini into terry cloth used in towels produced for the retailer.

Co-founder of the Mr Price Foundation, Natasja Ambrosio, told the H&M Sustainable Production Africa Summit, held in Cape Town on 4 September 2024, that the group launched the project in 2013 -- at a time when South Africa's cotton sector was on its knees. That year, South Africa had a total cotton crop of just 6,500 tons -- which had dropped off from a high of 80,000 tons in 1987.

By 2017, owing to the cotton industry's efforts to...